Sunday, September 04, 2005

Reporting from outside the US mainstream media focused on Iraq

American journalist and writer Mark Danner explains to Peter Morgan why support for the Bush administration is slipping.You've recently written about the minutes of the meeting that took place between Tony Blair and his foreign policy and security advisers in the run-up to the war in Iraq, now known as the 'Downing Street memo'. How significant have these revelations been in the US?The Downing Street memo has fit in with a general perception on the part of the US public that the war was begun on false pretences and the Bush administration was not honest about the reasons they were taking the country to war in Iraq. All of this results from the fact that the war is going badly.Within the memo itself it is interesting that Blair at one point says, 'We need a political strategy that will function well at least until the military strategy is successful', meaning that the war, once it was successful, would essentially have justified itself. The fact is the war has not been successful and it has not justified itself, so there is more and more pressure being put on the original rationale. Although probably 80 percent of the US public has only a very vague idea about the specifics of the memo, it does dovetail with a general perception, and intensifies a general perception, that the rationale of the war is becoming cloudier and more difficult to discern.The rationale for going to war which was stated by Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and other public officials has gone away. We have this misty, murky indistinct reason for being there. So the US public is left only with this awful 'present' in which Americans are being killed every day without any rationale and without any sign of an ending. And I think that the Downing Street memo fits into the general notion that we shouldn't be in Iraq, something is not right and we've been misled. So I think in that sense the Downing Street memo has been important.How has this created problems for the Bush administration generally and are you beginning to see splits and ruptures emerge within official US politics and the Bush administration?Well, at this point barely a third of the US public tells pollsters that the war was worth fighting. And so nearly two thirds say it was a bad idea. Similar numbers think that the president's performance on Iraq has been inadequate, and the president's general popularity ratings have plummeted - they are now in the low 40s, which is about what they were for President Lyndon Johnson around the time of the Tet offensive in 1968.This plummeting in popularity has not been noticed that broadly in the press, so there's still an interesting divorce in a funny way between the press treatment of the administration, although it's become somewhat harsher, and the general lack of popularity with the public.

The above, sent in by Polly, is from Peter Morgan's "The Thrashing Around of the Beast" (England's Socialist Review). It's Sunday and we're in the midst of our "What's being reported outside the US mainstream media." This entry focuses on Iraq.

Unknown gunmen killed 19 Iraqi police and soldiers and wounded another 16 in three separate attacks near Baquba, north of Baghdad, on Saturday, police and hospital sources said.The first attack came in the morning at an Iraqi army checkpoint 30 kilometres north of the mainly Sunni Arab city, when four soldiers died.Later, four police officers were killed by armed gunmen at a checkpoint in the centre of Baquba, 65 kilometres north of Baghdad.The third attack was on a checkpoint manned jointly by police and soldiers four kilometres south of Baquba, in which seven police and two soldiers were shot dead.

Two polls last month suggest that President George W. Bush's job approval rating is at the lowest point since he began his presidency. In part, this can be attributed to rising petrol prices. Mostly, however, it reflects growing disillusionment with events in Iraq, That sentiment can only have deepened over the past week or so, despite the President's attempt to rally Americans to the cause of a "free Iraq" - and now there is further questioning of his leadership to contend with in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (see below). During that short period, the White House's attempt to secure a draft constitution more amenable to Iraq's dethroned Sunni minority fell largely on deaf ears. More dramatically, a stampede on a Baghdad bridge, which killed about 1000 Shiite pilgrims, brought tensions among Iraq's rival communities to a new peak. A civil war threatened as the long-suffering Shiites blamed Sunni insurgents for provoking the incident. For the meantime, that conflict has been averted. The Shiites, who comprise 60 per cent of the population, continue to place their faith in the path to a democratic Iraq laid out by the United States. On October 15, there will be another step along that track when a referendum on the draft constitution is held. Frustratingly, this, however, is shaping as a severe obstacle.

The monthly cost to the US of the war in Iraq is now greater than the average monthly cost of the Vietnam War, a report by two anti-war groups says.The report put costs in Iraq at $500m (£278m) a month more than in Vietnam, adjusted for inflation.This makes Iraq the most expensive US war in the past 60 years, they say.

A Sunni Arab teenager who died saving Shias during last week's stampede disaster in Baghdad has been hailed as a hero whose sacrifice should unify Iraq.Othman al-Ubeydi drowned after rescuing at least three people who tumbled into the Tigris when Shia pilgrims panicked at rumours of a suicide bomber among them, leading to 1,005 deaths.The 19-year-old student's face was on newspapers and television screens yesterday and the provincial council said that a street would be named after him.Mr Ubeydi was sitting down to breakfast last Wednesday when loudspeakers from his Sunni mosque said Shias needed help at the al-Aima bridge, where Iraq's deadliest disaster since the 2003 invasion was unfolding.While hundreds were crushed to death on the bridge, hundreds more jumped or fell into the river. Witnesses said that the teenager, a strong swimmer and wrestler who trained at a gym, repeatedly dived in and saved between three and seven people. However he was exhausted when he tried to save a large woman, and she reportedly pulled him under.Iraq's government and media called Mr Ubeydi a martyr of national unity whose heroic sacrifice should reconcile Shias and Sunnis, rival Muslim sects which have edged towards civil war.

LAWYERS for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein complained yesterday that plans to start his trial next month gave him too little time to prepare his defence. British-based lawyer Abdel Haq Alani also said Saddam's defence attorneys are being kept in the dark on charges against him and doubted that the trial would start on October 19 as announced by Iraqi officials. Saddam's family called on his new legal team to highlight alleged breaches of the Iraqi former dictator's human rights since he was captured and imprisoned. Raghad Hussein, his eldest daughter, is assembling a new panel of international legal experts to represent her father and claims he is being treated unlawfully. Following meetings with supporters from Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Sudan and Lebanon, she said: "Participants discussed the recent developments of trial and the conditions of detention of President Saddam Hussein and his comrades which breach all human rights international laws, treaties and conventions."

It's a new American graffiti – the art of freeway blogging. Americans driving to work or the mall are increasingly being confronted by guerrilla art, or political messages, strung across freeway bridges or staked on verges and embankments.Agitprop for the post 9/11 era, the signs are typically anti-Bush or anti-war and succinct enough to grab the attention of motorists whizzing by. Or cryptic enough to linger annoyingly, like an advertising jingle.As dissent over the war in Iraq and the Bush presidency grows, illicit "freeway blogs" are sprouting daily on major freeways from California to New Jersey. Road workers, and ordinary drivers who differ politically, tear down the cardboard signs but new ones soon appear."The war is a lie.""Yee-ha isn’t a foreign policy.""Quagmire accomplished.""When Clinton lied, nobody died.""War president? My pet goat.""Jesus drives an SUV. Mohammed pumps his gas.""Osama Bin Forgotten.""Why change horsemen mid-apocalypse?""You have the right to remain silent but I wouldn’t recommend it."On a Seattle bridge, alongside the Republican slogan "comp-assionate conservatism", stands a stylised reproduction of the infamous photograph of a hooded Iraqi prisoner, arms stretched out and wires attached for electrocution.Above a busy freeway near Sacramento, the official home of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a triptych of small but prominent cardboard posters is affixed to a bridge: "Worst." "President." "Ever."And outside the First Baptist Church in upper New York State, the sign has been altered, a technique known as culture jamming, to read: "Jesus Loves You. Bush doesn't."American politics is famed for rude bumper stickers and big brash badges. But never before has guerrilla art, rather than official adverts for a particular candidate or party, been so common.Proponents say that the blogging is a free speech retort to corporate-run media and endless advertising billboards. The country is more divided than it has been for a generation, and millions of people spend hours daily on car-choked freeways.

Why the effort? It's all because of Cindy Sheehan -- a mother whose son Casey died in the war in Iraq -- and her disgruntlement with the ongoing violence there. For weeks, she has been besieging the ranch near Crawford where US President George W. Bush has been spending his astonishingly lengthy vacation. With the unassailable authority of a grieving mother, Sheehan asks the question that the rest of America is also beginning to ask: For what, exactly, are our children dying?It's the stuff of drama -- the story of the president and the grieving mother. Ever since Cindy Sheehan arrived in Crawford on August 6, she has been demanding that the president answer her questions in person. "I don't believe that my son died for a noble cause," she says.Bush may have refused to give in to her demands, but the persistent Cindy has become a constant fixture, her presence felt whenever the president makes a public appearance at the ranch or whenever his motorcade comes or goes. Indeed, the president and the mother are already deeply involved in a very public dialogue. We owe them something, says the president, referring to US soldiers who have already died in Iraq. We must "finish the task they gave their lives for." [. . .]Throughout the country, peace groups have begun dreaming of the emergence of a powerful anti-war movement that could force the president to withdraw from Iraq. The protestors at Camp Casey have already assembled a crude model of a commemorative plaque, with the inscription: "The end of the Iraq war began here in 2005."

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